The fourth issue of the Ultron storyline, and Tony Stark is still MIA within the form of a classic Avengers villain. I'm still wondering what's up with Ultron's psyche this time around, since before this point he seemed to be choosing less human forms as time went on, so I'm thinking that it may be more telling that he did choose a closer-to-human shape this time around than that he chose a female one. Ultron always was one of those psychologically-motivated villains--way back when, it was a simple but fairly straightforward version of the Oedipus complex. Obviously that's changed. :)
At this point my favorite character in this group is the Black Widow, as overall the most heroic of the bunch. I'm not sure that she's actually any more sure of herself than the others*, but she's definitely got the take-charge thing going, which is something the team seems to need right now. Fond as I am of Ms. Marvel, she really does seem to be treading water here at this point. She's a powerhouse, but has she had experience leading a super-team? If she has, I don't recall it.
Henry Pym's appearance was a little disappointing, primarily because of the way he's being portrayed. I know, I know, no one likes Yellowjacket anymore, despite all the efforts made over the years to remove responsibility for the time he slapped Jan.* (I will say that he was clearly emotionally abusive to her before that--he was often shown as somewhat insecure in the early days, and any time a wife has to walk on eggs to avoid denting her husband's fragile ego, there's something not-so-nice-going on--but that doesn't seem to have mattered to anyone at any point.)
But that bit where Natasha suggests going to Reed Richards for help, and Hank reminds the group that he is the expert in this particular field (you know, so that they won't waste precious time going looking for someone else), and Jan tells him that it's "not cool" to "brag" about how smart he is? "Not cool" on Jan's part. Particularly considering that, not six pages earlier, she was talking about how Ultron's threats to the world were going to be such a personal inconvenience for her ("Wow. The world just saw me declare doomsday. When and if we get out of here I am going to have to hire the King Kong of publicists to dig myself out of this one.").
The big thing this issue, though, is the much-discussed death of Lindy Reynolds, wife of the Sentry. If she is in fact dead. It seems unlikely since in this story Ultron is incapable of "originality"--a new lack in Ultron, by the way--and that means that the plan to incapacitate the Sentry by killing his wife is probably Tony Stark's, which means that it's probably a plan to incapacitate the Sentry by making it look as if his wife is dead. (If it is indeed a specific plan. I'd say that Ultron could have acted on Tony's awareness that Bob would be devastated by Lindy's loss without it having to have been an actual "plan.") I hope she's not dead. I kind of liked her, insofar as I've seen her, which I'll admit hasn't been much. I also hope that Tony was wrong, and that the Sentry will surprise us all. So far it's been a case of the others (Tony in particular) carefully manipulating him, working around his illness so that he can get done what they need him to, with Bob himself being purely reactive--I'd like to see him take some personal control.
* Not that being confident and direct is necessarily all it's cracked up to be. Ares has both characteristics in vast quantities, and he certainly lost time for the team by unthinkingly destroying the Starktech 9.
The girls don't like Ares much, by the way. They mainly root for one of the other characters to show him up.
** I think it says an interesting something about comic fans that Hal Jordan can be forgiven for destroying a good-sized chunk of the universe more readily than Hank Pym can be forgiven for a single slap, when in both cases it was later revealed that it "wasn't really their fault" due to external influence.
3 comments:
I think the difference between Hal and Hank is the way the writers have handled it.
Time and again, people like Millar and Bendis keep hammering away at the readers, reminding them over and over that Hank is a wifebeater. The "Ultimates" version of Hank doesn't help anything, especially when I think Millar writes them both the same in many respects (his Stark/futurist in Civil War, for one).
DC bent over backwards to bring Hal back (after a decade-long firestorm of complaint over the original idea).
Nevermind the fact that, IMHO, neither Bendis nor Millar (nor much of anyone else at Marvel) likely ever read or looked up the wifebeating situation. They look for something to sum up Hank, and come up with "wifebeater."
Just my take on things.
Take it and run.
RE: the Sentry, I very much hope so too. Frankly, I wonder if killing Lindy wouldn't be counter-productive in the extreme to the perpetrator.
I have to say, I don't have any problem with this portrayal of Hank at all. I'm familiar with all the old Avengers stories, and I still think that this is the right way to go with Hank.
He's an enormously insecure character who (retcon or not) has been prone to violence. He's also a scientist, a genius, and a bit of a recluse. These things make him unique and interesting.
As a hero, he's not really unique at all. He has generic powers, in any incarnation, and at his best and most heroic, he was still pretty average as far as the Avengers go.
The way I take it, modern Hank Pym isn't a superhero so much as he is a scientist whose work and life are entirely intertwined with superheroics. And I think that maybe if he had the confidence, he could be an amazing superhero in his own right (like Ms. Marvel is learning to be), or he could be a renowned scientist and/or inventor like Tony Stark, but instead he does the superhero thing when he's asked, and he does the scientist thing when he's needed.
And that makes perfect sense for his character. It's not the only thing that makes sense, but it's a depiction that sets him apart.
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